A new place for the my blog posts

I have finally updated my richardvobes.com website, the author’s site about my writing and books. For a long time I kept a simple html site running. Increasingly, the need to make it more compatible with all the different devices that can access information over the internet has become apparent. Also, my previous blog was situated on an fashioned bloggers site. They have been placing adverts on the pages making the thing ugly to look at. It wasn’t terrible easy to embed within other sites. So it is definitely time for a change.

One of the other problems I had with the old blog was that I couldn’t download the posts or move them to another site very easy. Even though I started blogging in 2005 it is a shame that the old posts cannot be accessed here. I do have a Word document of them so at least I haven’t lost them. But I feel I am starting all over again.

It doesn’t matter too much because my career has moved on and I am concentrating on writing these days and not podcasting. I do still podcast. I run a show called The Naked Englishman. I call it an audio journal of my life and I record a regular audio file which I upload to my server for public access. The title reflects the way in which the show is a ‘stripped down’ podcast produced by someone in England. Unlike many podcasts with recorded music and jingles as part of the content, my ‘journal’ is a simple raw thing, chronicling my personal and professional life. It isn’t everyone’s cup of tea and I do not record it to build a large audience or even to entertain. Many times the podcast is repetitive, like life itself, and contains the frustrations, moans, groans and woes thrown at me. Other times there I share moments of joy, humour and fun. So it is balanced.

The Naked Englishman is a window into the life of a creative person who is struggling to swim against the tide of commercial flow. I receive many emails from listeners who become frustrated with me as they listen to my crazy ideas and opinions. They have told me, often to my face, how they want to shake me up and try and knock sense into my dense brain. I think they see it as an effort to ‘save me from myself’.

But I am suborn and continually make the same mistakes. I am sure many of us do. But I am tenacious and do not want to give up my dreams. The podcast is available here: The Naked Englishman Podcast.

In addition to the audio podcast, I wish to construct a written journal here about the events of the publishing world – my publishing world. This website will chart the highs and lows of my self-publishing and the success and failures of writing children’s novel for money. To those reads, I thank you for following my journey. It is going to be interesting to see what happens.